


(like a perfect picture) in a broken frame

by PanBoleyn



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death Fix, Discussion of Canonical Suicide, Kid Shade Quentin, M/M, Mostly-Shadeless Quentin, Not Season/Series 05 compliant, Quentin Coldwater Lives, well he dies and comes back same endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-01-21 02:10:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21291917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: At the doorway to crossing over, Quentin Coldwater makes a different choice, and his own magic pulls him back to the living world. But magic is never simple, and he comes back split apart. Those who love him have to fix him, but in the meantime are faced with a frightened child and an adult who can't feel anything but the cold.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater & Alice Quinn, Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater & Margo Hanson, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 55
Kudos: 441





	1. This Is What I Brought You, This You Can Keep

**Author's Note:**

> Since this fic is technically canon compliant until the parking lot sequence (and, of course, the things Penny told Q don't happen beyond Julia getting her magic back, though that conversation does occur) the obvious warnings for suicide, suicidal ideation, grief, and references to the Monster apply.
> 
> Canon compliant except that the Qualice reunion was a friendship restart, not a romantic one. Mostly because I don't feel like unpicking that particular mess.
> 
> As ever, love and thanks to my RAO enablers, particularly Maii for reading over my drafts.

** _(i) bid my blood to run, before I come undone_ **

“All that stuff that we think protects us or motivates us or scares us up there, here it just all falls away. You're finally just you. You'll see.” 

Quentin stares at the MetroCard in Penny’s hand, and… he wants to take it. The idea of finally being at peace, of being able to see his dad again, and Teddy, of being able to visit with Arielle like they did after they split up, is as tempting as it was the first time he tried to kill himself. 

And he knows very well that he succeeded in killing himself this time. Penny had been kind, maybe, telling him that not wanting to leave the people he loved, who loved him, meant he didn’t, but it doesn’t work like that. If anything, the funeral reinforced the idea that he was right to do what he did. Now they’ll love his memory, so much easier to love than the living person who, by the end, none of them even seemed to look twice at.

That isn’t fair. Quentin knows it isn’t fair. Alice was trying to be his friend again, it wasn’t her fault he was too lost to the numb static in his mind to really respond to her reaching out. And Eliot… Quentin never even got to see him properly again, talk to him for even a minute - seeing him himself again through ghost’s eyes is better than never seeing him at all but, but… 

Eliot burned a peach, and he’d looked like he was drowning in grief. Quentin doesn’t know what to  _ do  _ with that, he doesn’t understand. 

He’s so tired. He just wants to rest, and Penny was never one to lie to him, and the idea that crossing over into the afterlife proper will fix all the broken things in Quentin’s brain is so, so tempting. Even more than the tangled love and hurt and frustration that makes him want to deny he’s done, makes him want to find a way back. Penny himself fought for months, didn’t he, before he ate Underworld food and gave in? Maybe he just wants to spare Quentin the frustration. 

And yet. 

Everything Penny says is exactly what Quentin daydreamed death would be, when he wrote his notes and made his plans. When he took a pocket knife to his wrists or swallowed down pills, or scoped out the views on tall buildings. It’s not what he hoped when he stood still and let his own magic take him, because he’d been too far gone to think anything other than  _ I’m too tired to run, _ forgetting what it meant. 

It’s typical of him really, that his deliberate attempts should fail, but he succeeds on what amounts to a dazed whim.

But everything Penny is promising matches his hopes so well. Too well. Quentin thinks of magic, at its best as beautiful as he’d hoped but brutal and horrifying in ways he’d never imagined. Of Fillory, where the idea had saved him but the reality was never a place where he could fit. Well, not in his own time, anyway. He thinks of loving Alice, how it had seemed like the perfect storybook romance but in the end all they’d done was take turns in ripping each other’s hearts to shreds. And loving Eliot? Even after a lifetime together Eliot didn’t want to keep him for real, and who could blame him, but still…

Nothing, not magic and not Fillory and not love, has ever been what Quentin hoped, before he had it. Why should death, of all things, be exactly what he’d wanted it to be?

He turns away from Penny and the card he’s holding out, suddenly restless. There’s no coming back from this, if he takes that card and goes through that doorway. But he’s  _ dead _ , there’s already no coming back, right? “Why am I getting moved on so fast? I thought people had to wait for ages,” he says, staring at the far wall rather than turning back. 

“No idea, but don’t question it, brother. It’s a good thing, just take it and go.” 

“You never asked for my secrets,” Quentin says. “My attempts aren’t a secret - the only part of that I never told anyone is that I never said in so many words that I thought magic fixed it.” 

Penny doesn’t answer, and Quentin doesn’t look at him. Something isn’t right here. He doesn’t know what, but something’s off. Penny says he’s nicer because all the bullshit falls away, but it still doesn’t feel right. 

As he thinks that, there’s a, a tug in the place inside him where mending lives. Where he’d felt it when he fixed that mug, the need for the pieces to go back to what they used to be. Where, in the Mirror Realm, the Seam-mirror had whispered to him that he could fix it. Now there’s something… He closes his eyes and pictures a thread back to the life he's left behind, as blazing gold as the sparks that killed him, and he steps forward without consciously deciding to. One step, two, and he breaks back into the run he should never have stopped, when his heart was pounding in his ears and his breath coming hard. 

When he was alive. 

He feels none of that now, just the speed. Penny is shouting something behind him but Quentin doesn’t hear that. He only sees, ahead of him on the ground, a wide puddle too reflective to be water. His foot hits it, there's a jolt a bit like when he'd been yanked into the Old Gods' waiting room with Josh, and then - 

There’s nothing at all. 

  
  
  


** _(ii) a photograph lost here, since you were mine_ **

They were all too exhausted after the bonfire to go back to the penthouse, even if it would have been a simple matter of 23 traveling them back. So they just went back to the Cottage, wandering off to various rooms. Eliot had meant to go back to his own old room, but had found himself turning in a different direction. 

Which is how he wakes up the next morning lying on Quentin’s bed, next to Alice of all people. She’s still asleep, curled on the far side of the bed, when Eliot sits up, still dressed except for his coat and suit jacket. He looks down to find he’s still holding the cards he’d found when he came in. They'd been on the floor like someone dropped them, and he thinks it’s where Julia got the deck with the card she burned - the King of Hearts that had Quentin’s face. But the cards he’s holding, Queen of Spades and King of Diamonds… the Queen with Alice’s face and the King with Eliot’s own. Quentin was good at object manifestation and brilliant at card magic, he must have made them, practicing.

Alice had found him here last night, and broken down when she saw the cards. He’d reached for her hand the way she’d reached for his at the bonfire, and she’d told him the truth that no one else had dared to say in his hearing before. 

_ “He didn’t run. He stopped, partway across the room, and he let - and I don’t know why. He promised we’d do what needed doing together, we - he promised we could be friends for real this time, that we’d make that work, and then suddenly he was telling 23 to take me and go, and then he was gone.” _

Eliot hadn’t been surprised by what Alice said, not really. 23 had told Margo, who’d told Eliot, that Quentin died to stop the Library guy, that he’d died a hero, and part of Eliot had wanted to rage over that. His Q, who had wanted so badly to be a hero, he finally got it, was his fucking ghost happy now? Was he proud of dying to get what he’d wanted so badly, was it worth it?

But no. It hadn’t been like that. A King of Hearts card, with Quentin’s face. The Suicide King, he heard that somewhere once. And if he knows a bit of trivia like that, then Quentin…  _ Were you telling us even then how this was going to end, Q? You promised me you wouldn’t once, but that was another life and I’m the one who told you it wasn’t really us, aren’t I? _

Because Quentin had promised him, a voice in the dark of a moonless night on the Mosaic, that he wouldn’t leave Eliot like that, not by his own hand. That he’d come to Eliot, he’d take the ‘don’t hurt yourself’ potion for as long as he needed to, during bad spells. That he wouldn’t leave like that. He’d promised, but Eliot had still woken up to a world without him, to a world where Quentin chose to die. 

What the fuck is he supposed to do with that? 

Part of him wants to tear through the Brakebills library, the Whitespire one, the fucking Library itself, until he finds a way to bring Q back. Part of him wants to lay back down and never move again. And part of him almost wants to go back to being trapped in his mind, because there had been a Memory Quentin who’d taken to keeping him company while he searched through the Monster’s memories. He had been only an echo of the real thing, of course. But an echo is better than the yawning emptiness of the real Quentin’s death. 

Anything would be better than this cold empty void at Eliot’s core. What is he supposed to do now?

Shouting downstairs draws his attention, and wakes Alice, who sits up looking as disoriented as Eliot feels. “Oh… I didn't mean to fall asleep…” she says, fumbling for her glasses. 

“Does it really matter, Alice?” Eliot asks, and she shakes her head. 

“No, I guess it doesn’t. Why is Margo shouting?” 

“No idea. We should probably find out.” 

They come down the stairs to find everyone looking like they’ve just gotten more bad news. Margo is pacing the room, muttering curses under her breath. Julia is sitting on the couch, pale and shaking, Kady next to her with an arm around her shoulders. 23 has his hands shoved in his pockets and isn’t looking at anyone. And then there’s Dean Fogg, standing in the middle of the room and looking decidedly uncomfortable. 

“What’s going on?” Alice demands, and Margo whirls to see them both. 

“Eliot…” she begins, the fury replaced by an almost dazed look. Then she glares at Fogg. “Tell them!” 

Fogg clears his throat. “Earlier this morning there was another magic surge. But there were particularly strong flares in a room on campus. The same room from which you entered the Mirror Realm last week. When the room was checked, two… well, one person was discovered unconscious on the floor.” 

“Two people,” Julia corrects hoarsely. “Two people now.” 

“OK, can someone fucking clarify?” Eliot snaps. He doesn’t have the patience for games. Not now. 

“Quentin,” Kady says quietly, and the world fucking stops. “Sort of… He’s split, like Alice was when she was trying to get Zelda’s daughter Harriet out of the Mirror Realm, only not quite the same way.” 

“I don’t understand,” Alice whispers. She grabs for Eliot’s hand and he lets her, this is apparently their thing now. In Quentin’s absence they reach for each other. He can feel her hand shaking but that’s all right because so is his. “He - he disintegrated. He was gone.” 

“Mr. Adiyodi tells me that the spell which killed him was a mending spell. Both Quentins had traces on them of a mending spell, typical of what is usually found on an object after a minor mending. We believe that somehow, his magic attempted to mend  _ him _ , and mostly succeeded.” 

“Except there’s two of him,” Eliot says, and he should be thrilled, shouldn’t he? Except he, he only feels numb. Because is Quentin really back, or is it just a pair of bodies? 

“It’s worse than that, El,” Margo says. “One of them’s an adult and one’s a child. The kid’s his shade, only as a living person instead of a ghost kid. The adult Q’s shadeless.” 

“And we already know what Coldwater’s like shadeless,” 23 says, voice harsh. 

“They’ve both been examined by psychics among my professors,” Fogg cuts in. “To call the child Mr. Coldwater’s shade and the adult version shadeless is roughly accurate, but not entirely true. There is a fragment of shade in the adult but, yes, most of his shade is contained in the child. However, neither of them show any signs of violent intent.” 

“We can work with this,” Alice says. “It might not be as straightforward as putting me back together was, but we know how to put a shade back, and I know how to reverse a Mirror Realm split. Julia, your discipline is meta-composition, I could use your help with this.” 

“How did you know my magic came back?” 

Alice’s eyes flash behind her glasses, a strange reaction. “I saw you, the deck of cards in a cloud all around you.” And suddenly Eliot understands Alice’s reaction because that was  _ Quentin’s _ , that was how magic had first come out of him, he’d told Eliot the story. And apparently he’d told Alice too. 

So Julia got her personal magic back thanks to Q killing himself, along with magic coming the rest of the way back because the Library asshole died in the same blast? It’s stupid, maybe, to be angry, when they might actually be able to get Q back now, but Eliot wants to be angry. He wants to demand answers. But maybe he shouldn’t start here. 

“I want to see Quentin. Both of them,” Eliot says.

“Eliot, I don’t think -” Margo begins, but Eliot cuts her off. 

“I’m going to see them, Margo.” He’d woken up to a world where he was never going to see Quentin again. This is not what he’d wanted, but it’s something. It’s a start.

  
  


** _(iii) funny when you’re dead how people start listening_ **

For the record, Margo thinks this is a terrible idea. But she also knows Eliot, and she knows he’s not going to be moved from this. If it were up to her, none of them would be seeing Quentin until this is fixed, if it ever is. It’s going to hurt too much, to have him but not him, twice over. 

She feels like she’s been in a haze for a week, ever since… well, since. 23 had been the one to tell her Quentin died a hero, but part of her thinks he might have been lying, or leaving something out. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t  _ want  _ to know. Doesn’t want to think there might have been something they didn’t do, something  _ she  _ didn’t do. 

The last two things she said to Quentin that weren’t about the mission were both jokes, and mocking ones at that. And one of them wasn’t even accurate - Alice had set her straight when they were building the firepit for the bonfire, they weren’t dating again, they’d been trying to be friends. Margo thinks of holding Quentin’s crown last night, the metal warming under her hands like it had the day she’d put it on his head. 

Why did this have to happen just when everyone was supposed to be all right? 

And now this. Margo wants to believe it’s a good thing, that Quentin is somehow back, even in this fucked-up state. Maybe it is. Alice was brought back from being a Niffin, Julia was shadeless and now she’s not, Eliot was possessed and now the Monster is gone. Apparently Alice split herself into two and Librarian Lady’s daughter was fractured into three in the Mirror Realm, Alice figured out how to put them back together too. They’ve fixed shit like this before. But what if they can’t fix this? What then? Do they just… adopt little kid Q and try to keep mostly-shadeless adult Quentin from doing something terrible? 

Before they left, 23 said that shadeless Quentin should be locked away until and unless a fix was found. Maybe he’s right, though Margo is glad Eliot was out of earshot at the time. He’d gone to change his clothes, but he’s still in all black. It suits him, in an unpleasant way, but it’s not her Eliot. And that’s the scariest thing of all. Margo wants Quentin back, she does. She loves him, even if… if she’d sort of forgotten that until the moment 23 said he was dead.

But what scares her the most is that if they can’t get him back for real, Eliot might never really come back either. 

Lipson has the Quentins in a warded infirmary room, and she gives them the unlock spell, not without some obvious hesitation. “The adult doesn’t do much, I gave the little boy crayons. Fogg spelled the room so no magic can be done in there, by the way. Just in case.” 

Wonderful. But then, Margo remembers Julia killing an entire race of talking trees when she was shadeless. It’s better to be safe than sorry. 

The first thing Margo notices when she opens the door is that they’re in identical clothes. The black hoodie and black jeans Quentin had worn the last day of his life (first life?), are shrunk to child-size on the little boy who’s coloring on the floor. Or he  _ was  _ coloring on the floor. The little boy - Q, maybe, call the adult Quentin? - looks up and squeaks, eyes wide and terrified before he darts around to hide behind the chair where his adult self sits. 

Quentin, who had been looking out the window, turns to look their way, head tilted as if he finds them mildly interesting. “Oh, hello. I wondered if anyone was going to stop in.”

It’s Quentin… but it’s not Quentin. Margo didn’t know Julia well enough at the time - still doesn’t, really - to appreciate the difference when she’d been shadeless. Her experience of Alice as a Niffin had been brief but Niffin Alice had definitely been nothing like her human self, and the Monster hadn’t even known how to pretend to be a generic human, much less  _ Eliot _ . Her hallucinated Eliot had been basically a more vivid memory of Eliot, turned a little wacky, and so doesn’t count. Which means that Margo has never really experienced this for herself, this person who is still one of her people but at the same time isn’t.

“You didn’t think anyone would?” That’s Eliot, and at the sound of his voice, little Q peeks out from behind the chair, waving quickly - at Eliot, but not at Margo - before he hides again. Quentin just shrugs, and if his vague interest when they came in had been unsettling, it’s worse now that his focus is on Eliot. Because Quentin has never been mildly anything where Eliot’s concerned. 

And then his expression turns cold, his gaze shifting back to her, then back to the window. “Well, when no one seemed to notice me until after I killed myself, it did seem possible that no one would check in now that I’m back. Though I guess coming back split like this is crisis enough for me to be worth your while again?” 

_ Until after I killed myself. _ No. No, he didn’t. It wasn’t like that, he just wasn’t fast enough. That was what 23 had said. But Margo looks at Eliot, who looks stricken by how bluntly Quentin said that but not in the least surprised. Thinks of how he’d crashed out with Alice of all people in Quentin’s room last night. Alice, who was the only other person there at the Seam, and almost as wrecked in her grief as Eliot. Alice, who is a shitty liar except for her one big con during the Key Quest and that was just a lie of omission. Alice, who would have told Eliot the truth about how the man they both loved had died. 

Margo has no reason to be certain that 23 had really been honest. Especially when she’d  _ wanted  _ it to be an accident, just the latest in their run of bad luck. Latest and some of the worst.

“You look surprised, Margo. Didn’t you know?” Quentin asks.

Margo can only shake her head. “23 said that you just weren’t fast enough to outrun the explosion.”

“Oh, of course he did. He pretends he didn’t see what he saw, the little guy here tells me that our timeline’s Penny said caring about people means it’s not suicide, and oh, dying was the best thing I could do for everyone. I guess you might agr-”

“Don’t say that!” Eliot’s voice barely even sounds like his, raw and choked with tears. “Don’t  _ ever  _ say that. Dying was not the best thing you could have done, how could you ever think -” What might well have been a good long rant is interrupted when little Q darts out from behind the chair, wrapping his arms around Eliot’s good leg. 

“Don’t be sad, El, we’re sorry,” he says urgently, looking up at Eliot with huge brown eyes and - he hides his face as soon as he sees Margo watching, hides from her like he’s afraid of her, and some piece of Margo’s heart shatters because no version of Quentin should be  _ afraid  _ of her. Not, not for real. “Penny took us to say goodbye and we watched you burn things and he said we did a good thing -” 

“You did,” Margo says carefully, gentling her voice as much as she can. Little Q hides against Eliot’s leg all the more fiercely, and adult Quentin raises his eyebrows. Margo’s throat tightens, but she presses on. “You did do a good thing, you stopped someone awful and you brought magic back. But we didn’t want to lose you to get that good thing.”

“Yeah, well, when you can tell a quest story three, four, five times but can’t spare thirty seconds to check in with a guy unless you’re mocking him, maybe you can see how someone would get confused,” Quentin comments, sounding bored. Margo glares at him, but that only makes him smile a thin awful smile. Nothing like their Quentin at all.

“You know what -” 

“Bambi, what is he talking about?” Eliot asks. He’s stroking little Q’s hair soothingly, a gesture that looks oddly practiced for a guy whose only experience of fatherhood involves an adult who turned out to not even be his kid. 

“I - Eliot -”   


“Oh, what, now it occurs to you that maybe this might not go down well? Pity you didn’t think of it at the time, huh. Margo?” Quentin asks, and something about his tone of voice is… She realizes he’s mimicking her, the cadence of her voice when she’d said  _ “Grow a pair of tits, Coldwater,” _ and part of her wants to slap him across the face. Part of her, looking at the little boy Q who’s terrified of her and the questioning look on Eliot’s face, wants to cry. 

“No,” she says tightly. “We are not having this discussion now, and you are not going to blame me -” 

Quentin cuts her off. “I don’t. Or, not entirely. I blame myself too, don’t worry, but I have more than enough commentary to go around. You wanna wait for a group session, I can do that. Get it all out of the way at once, why the fuck not.” 

The ‘group session’, as Quentin terms it, has to wait two days before Quentin and Q are released to their, well, custody, as it were. Fogg gives them clearance to use the Cottage, and in fact tells them it would be best if they don’t leave. Or, at least, don’t let either Quentin leave. For Margo, this is a very unpleasant two days because Eliot is barely talking to her. 

“Eliot, come on, you’re going to take the word of a shadeless fake Quentin?” she demands halfway through the first day. 

“Did he lie, Margo?” Eliot asks, a shadow in his eyes that she’s never seen before. 

“Technically, no, but, El, it wasn’t like that! He seemed fine, he… there weren’t any warning signs, not like we used to see sometimes,” Margo insists, but looking back… The thing is that she isn’t actually sure she’s right. She knows that she didn’t see anything at the time, but the truth is, she doesn’t really remember paying Quentin any attention at all, except to be annoyed at him when he suggested the bottles might not hold. Or when he didn’t want to go to South with Alice. 

Shit, was he hoping she’d bend on that, so he’d know it was safe to tell her other things? 

The thought makes her feel suddenly sick, and she remembers again the feel of that crown in her hands, the scent of sea air the first time and the smell of bonfire smoke the second. She can picture Quentin in the background of everything when she came back, drifting and quiet. But now, remembering, she can see how strange that was for their quest-loving Quentin, their Q who isn’t always effective but who is stubbornly persistent in saving the people he loves. How did it not send red alerts screaming through her mind, for him to be so quiet in the face of losing both Eliot and Julia? 

Margo doesn’t know what of these thoughts show on her face, but it’s enough that Eliot turns on his heel and walks away. The thump of his cane seems to echo in her head. She’s got to do something, got to fix this mess, but she has no idea how. 

  
  


** _(iv) we say that you didn’t try_ **

It should be worse, maybe, to be faced with a cold-eyed, blank-faced version of her oldest friend, especially when - 

Julia’s replayed it in her mind over and over. Quentin’s little wave good-bye before he’d left for the Seam, how she’d been too tired and unhappy to wave back and had only looked at him. Part of her wondered, kept wondering, if she’d only waved back, only showed that yes, he would be missed, he needed to come back, would he…? 

So, seeing this not-Quentin looking just like he had that day should be worse. It clearly is for at least some of the others. Margo and Eliot already saw them both, so they’ve got their reactions under control, but both Alice and Penny are unnerved by the adult Quentin. But it’s little Q - Margo suggested the naming scheme - who breaks Julia’s heart, when the two of them arrive at the Physical Kids’ Cottage.

Because in her deepest heart, when she thinks of Quentin, she doesn’t think of the adult version. She thinks of a tiny boy with floppy hair, the only other kid in their preschool class who could read real books besides her. And the little boy clinging to his adult self’s leg, hiding from all of them, is a little older than that memory, but still… It breaks Julia’s heart in a way the almost-shadeless version of her adult friend can’t. And she can’t help trying to coax the little guy away from said adult, because maybe he’s not the Beast Quentin she met in Timeline 23. Maybe he’s not even like she was when she was shadeless. But still, Q will be safer with real people, won’t he? 

Not that Q is entirely real either, they’re both split pieces of a real person, but the idea holds. 

So Julia kneels down so she’s at Q’s level, ignoring the suspicious glare from Quentin. “Uh, Julia -” Penny starts, but she gives him a look and he shuts up. 

“Hey, Q. You’re safe now, why don’t you come away from your other self so he can help us fix you, huh?” She puts a hand on his shoulder, ready to draw him away, but he yelps, and Quentin actually picks him up, stepping back from Julia who scrambles upright again. She doesn’t want to have to look up at him. 

“He doesn’t want to go with you,” Quentin says evenly and, fuck. Did she sound like that, when she was shadeless? She remembers what she did but some things feel like she looks at the memories through a filter, and how she talked is one of them. Beast Quentin had had an edge in his voice that this one lacks - he’s all flat affect, like… like… All the comparisons she can think of are Star Trek references, and that seems too cheerful for the current situation.

“I don’t see why not. I’m your oldest friend, why wouldn’t he trust -” 

“You don’t care anymore!” That’s Q, voice muffled from where he’s hiding his face against his adult self’s shoulder. “The Monster hurt us and you just watched!”

“Wait a minute,” Julia says. “That’s - you were bluffing that day, and anything I could have done might have made things worse. I’m sorry, I wanted to do something.” 

“And when I got dragged along to dump that body? You know I remember almost nothing about that, until 23 came back with his news?” 

Julia does remember that. Remembers them materializing on the bench, but she’d been too focused on Penny to really register anything else. She still doesn’t know what Quentin’s referring to there, but - She knows by now that Quentin did kill himself, Eliot and Margo said he’d told them so, and when they said that Alice had commented bitterly that it had been obvious. “Are you saying it’s my fault you killed yourself?” she snaps, forcing herself to ignore the way Q makes another distressed sound. 

She was shadeless too, once, and she was a goddess. This cheap imitation of her friend isn’t going to intimidate her, and the little boy can’t be allowed to break her.

“You sound like Margo,” Quentin says with a thin unpleasant smile, glancing over to where Margo is standing with her arms crossed. She looks angry, but hurt as well. “No, I still did what I did, and in the end, it’s on me. But I can’t help wondering,  _ Jules _ .” The fond nickname sounds like an insult in that flat voice. “Might it have helped, if you had just taken five minutes to try and help in a way that wasn’t helping you? ‘I’m going to need you when I’m a goddess again.’” 

“I was trying to give you a new goal! That used to help!” 

“And if you thought I was still at a stage where it would, that just proves all the more that you were not paying attention.” 

“You say you don’t blame us, but it sure sounds like you do,” Margo says, voice tight. “You’re acting like we wanted you to die, and you know that’s not true.”

“Penny said it was the best thing we could do.” Q’s small voice is still muffled, but the obvious sadness in it is a gut punch anyway. “That dying was the right thing, the good thing. And you guys just burned stuff and sang. We would have tried to get you back, were you going to try?” 

“I don’t remember this part,” Quentin says. “But I’m taking the kid at his word.” 

“It’s only been a week,” Kady speaks up for the first time. “People need time to process shit, before they can figure out what to do about it. Knowing this crowd, though, someone was gonna try once they had their heads clear again.”

“Hmm,” Quentin says. “What happens now?” 

“We fix you,” Alice says, and she looks a lot less shaken than Julia feels. Which is unfair - if Quentin is blaming people, why isn’t he blaming the people who were  _ with him _ when he died? Then again, maybe Alice is just hiding it well. “Julia’s going to help me construct something from a few different rituals - like how you guys intended to put Julia’s shade back in her body, as well as an experience I had with people being split like this. We’re going to make this work, Quentin.” 

Quentin tilts his head, gaze drifting back to Julia. “You’re going to help her?” 

Julia lifts her chin. “Look, whatever problems we had, we can handle them when you’re yourself again. Honestly I’m not even sure what you think I missed. But I’m not going to just let you stay like this, whatever you think of me.”

Quentin shrugs, and Q peeks briefly at her, hair mostly hiding his eyes. But Julia keeps her cool. She is going to do exactly what she says and then after… After, she and Quentin, the real Quentin, are going to have a lot to talk about, apparently. She doesn’t know what she missed, but when Quentin is himself again she’ll ask him, she’ll figure out how to fix this. Because if there was something she could have done, Julia wants to know. 

She never wants to have to bury Quentin again.

  
  
  


** _(v) these prayers will make you bleed_ **

“Thank you for watching him.” 

Eliot only just manages not to jump. Quentin isn’t normally quiet, but this mostly-shadeless version is like a fucking cat in the one damned way the real Quentin never managed. No weird sitting contortions or falling asleep at random (occasionally in patches of sunlight, even) but he’s unnervingly quiet. “Don’t thank me,” he says, looking down to where a little boy is asleep with his head on Eliot’s uninjured thigh. 

He’d never known, somehow, how much Teddy had looked like a blonder version of Quentin as a boy. He’d always resembled him, of course, but as an adult it hadn’t been as pronounced. But at six years old, it turns out that Teddy and Quentin could have passed for twins. Eliot even - he remembers Teddy falling asleep on him like this more times than he can count. If he lets himself, he could close his eyes and pretend that it is Teddy asleep in his lap, that the person sitting down next to him on the couch is his Quentin, the real one. That they’re a family again. 

“Still, it can’t be easy for you.” And the illusion shatters because even this Quentin’s  _ voice  _ is wrong. There’s nothing specific Eliot can point to, no tone or cadence or turn of phrase that signals this isn’t Quentin, but he knows. Maybe it’s just something that happens after fifty years. 

“A lot of things aren’t easy for me, Quentin. Letting a kid version of you nap on me is weird, but hardly a big challenge.” 

“But, I mean, he must remind you of Teddy.” 

Eliot’s breath catches. Quentin sounds like he could be discussing the weather, not their once-and-never son. He wonders dizzily if this is what it was like for Quentin when Julia was shadeless. They’ve been friends since they were four years old, did he ever have this sickening sense of indefinable wrongness? Did the Monster do this or was it too unlike Eliot to have the same effect? He doesn’t know. He’s afraid to know.

“Yes, he reminds me of Teddy,” he admits, trying to keep his voice as level as Quentin’s. In his lap, Q stirs a little but doesn’t wake up. If anything he cuddles a bit closer. Eliot strokes his hair and it feels just like his Quentin’s hair, just there’s less of it because it’s on a smaller head. And, oh God, it hurts. “I never knew how much he looked like you as a little boy.”

“I never really saw it,” Quentin says, sounding mildly thoughtful. “I… remember that I loved him, more than anything - I felt I finally understood my father, which is probably why I later told him about our life in past Fillory - but… Hmm. I never liked myself, so I think that meant I didn’t see myself in him? I thought he had my dad’s eyes, for example.” 

“He had your eyes,” Eliot says quietly, staring at the far wall. Alice and Julia are at the library, trying to put together something from the mix of spells dealing with shades and what Alice did with some kind of prism. Margo went with them because she needs to be doing something, even if it’s research. Kady offered to get in touch with Harriet, the woman Alice saved from the Mirror Realm and had to put back together, so Eliot thinks she’s doing that. 23 is God only knows where - probably with Julia in case Quentin turns homicidal and she needs a bodyguard.

And Eliot is here, with two versions of the love of his life, and neither of them can feel the same way, or at least not in any helpful sense. 

Teddy had Quentin’s eyes. Eliot had always been glad of that. He’d never thought much of it, when Quentin himself always insisted Teddy had Ted Coldwater’s eyes, but now… _ I never liked myself, so I think that meant I didn’t see myself in him? _ Doesn’t that just take on a whole new meaning, given recent events? “Do you know why you did it?” he asks, eyes fixed on the wall, not looking at Quentin. 

Quentin almost died on this couch thanks to the Scarlotti Web. Eliot remembers finding him in the closet, remembers how still he’d been, and how easy it had been to rage at Julia for doing this. He hadn’t understood, yet, why the idea that Quentin might never wake up had been so terrifying.

“Why I killed myself, you mean?” Quentin asks, that too-calm voice breaking into Eliot’s memories. “I do remember, actually. It… you won’t like this.” 

“I already don’t like anything about this, Coldwater. But I need to know - whatever you can tell me.” 

“I have all my memories up till the Underworld, at which point the kid has some and I have some, which is weird but whatever. As to why I killed myself… It was a whim, Eliot. A stray thought, really - I was tired, you see. Tired to my bones, in every way it’s possible to be tired. Emotionally, mentally, physically… The Monster liked to cuddle me at night, I’m not sure why or how far it would have taken things, but the upshot was that I couldn’t sleep. And everything that kept happening… I’m sorry, it’s hard to explain feelings now even though I remember them. But you heard me with the others. There were signs, but I was too far gone to understand how badly off I was, and no one else noticed.” 

“I don’t understand how you can kill yourself on a whim,” Eliot forces himself to say. 

“Well, from what I remember - my head was mostly static at this point so it’s a little fuzzy - I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. I just didn’t want to run anymore, I wanted to rest. I don’t think I truly understood that meant, you know, eternal rest until I saw Penny.”

Eliot strokes little Q’s hair and tries to breathe steadily. Tries not to think about the time during their first year in Fillory when he found Quentin with a knife in hand, blade hovering over his pulse point. “Didn’t you want to come back from there? It’s supposed to be an awful place, the Mirror Realm. Didn’t you want - you worked so hard to save me, didn’t you want to -” 

“I think I thought you were dead. There was a lot of blood,” Quentin says, conversationally. “I remember, seeing that was… It’s hard to explain this when I remember the things I felt but I don’t understand them. But through all this, Julia, 23, Alice - all of them at one point or another tried to make me switch gears. To choose to stop the Monster even at the cost of not saving you. I wouldn’t listen. I would have set the world on fire to get you back, would have bargained with the Monster, the Sister, given them whatever they asked. But then it looked like the thing we did to save you had killed you, and…” 

Quentin looks at Eliot then - Eliot can see him turn his head out of the corner of his eye. Eliot doesn’t turn, can’t bear to. _ I would have set the world on fire to get you back. _ What can he even say to that, especially here and now, to a Quentin who won’t understand and can’t care? 

“I didn’t think ‘oh I’ll see Eliot in the Underworld if I die too’, not exactly,” Quentin continues. “It was more… The static thing, it happened after the Monster got the last stone, when I lost hope. But Alice and Margo brought us new options, and it eased up, I could think again. A little. But then I couldn’t anymore. Shock, maybe. I don’t know.” 

“Why did you go to the fucking Seam, Quentin?” Eliot asks, throat almost too tight to speak so that his words come out strangled. “Why not just - just wait with Margo, or stay at the Cottage, why go somewhere so fucking dangerous? You had to - you had to know you weren’t OK! If you couldn’t even think!”

“I’d point out that not being able to think proves that I obviously didn’t kn-” 

“Don’t be a pedantic little shit!”

“I’m not, I’m trying to explain. I know I was afraid to stay at the infirmary, to be there if Lipson confirmed you had died. And I know that… Alice and I were trying to be friends again. I’d told her I’d go with her. I think I was holding to the idea of keeping my word because I thought if I didn’t keep going I’d just break. I didn’t think I could break.” 

Eliot swallows hard, looking down at the little boy Q still asleep in his lap. Quentin is a light sleeper but Teddy had, as a little boy, slept like a log. Quentin once mentioned he did too, as a child. “But you did break,” he says, his voice wavering. “You disintegrated, and you came back in two pieces. You  _ did  _ break.” 

“I guess I did,” Quentin says. “All in all, it probably would have been more convenient to have a standard breakdown. I did choose to come back, if it helps. Or, rather… I followed an instinct that felt like my mending magic. So I died on a whim and came back on an instinct.” 

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Eliot hisses, finally turning to look at Quentin. He looks back, composed and indifferent in a way Quentin never is. Eliot wants to take him by the shoulders and shake him until he gets a reaction, but the warm weight of little Q in his lap keeps him still. Anyway, he could shake this Quentin until his teeth rattle, it won’t change anything. Almost all of his soul, his heart, are in the little boy - the adult is Quentin’s intellect, or something. 

Eliot hadn’t really been listening to Alice’s theorizing beyond noting that it’s not as simple as shade half and shadeless half, even if it is similar. He didn’t care about the details, and he still doesn’t. He just needs his Quentin back, the real one. This, this cold mockery of Quentin is - well. Even this is better than Quentin still being dead, but it’s a kind of nightmare all on its own. 

“Well, I wanted it to make you feel better, but I’m guessing that didn’t work.” 

“Could you just… not talk?” Eliot finally says. “You’re really fucking bad at not making this worse, so just hush.” 

“Fair enough,” Quentin says easily, and goes quiet. Still and calm in a way the real Quentin never is. Eliot swallows hard and tries to focus on the fact that as awful as this is, this is an awful they can fix. There’s hope here. 

He didn’t have hope yesterday. It’s something, isn’t it?

** **

** _(vi) the cage already there around the bird_ **

“You know, you really shouldn’t have taken me with you that day. You were the only one who noticed anything was wrong, after all.” 

Alice glances up from her equations to where Quentin is taking notes from one of the books she brought in. Over in the corner, little Q is set up with the Fillory books and coloring books, because Quentin doesn’t like to leave him alone. But the child is mostly content, as long as the only people in the room besides, well, himself, are Alice and/or Eliot. 

The others find this calm, all-but-shadeless Quentin unnerving. He’s reduced Margo of all people to tears - although that might have been a combination of the icily cutting adult and the sincerely heartbroken child, Alice wasn’t there so she can’t say - and has Julia avoiding him like the plague, while 23 seems to expect him to break out in violence any minute. But there’s part of Alice that finds him easier, the part of her that still feels more Niffin than woman. 

He’s also a surprisingly good research assistant. But she’s been waiting for him to come at her like he has Julia and Margo, because she has her own points to make.

“And you shouldn’t have had 23 drag me off like a child. You gave me your word, and then not only did you break it, you took my choices away. Again,” she tells him, matching his calm clipped tone. 

Quentin looks up, doing that slightly creepy head tilt of his, the one that says  _ I should be feeling something now, I don’t feel it but I know its absence. _ Alice doesn’t remember that when she was a Niffin, and she knows Quentin is curious about what he doesn’t feel in a way that Julia says was not true for her. “You’re right, that was a dick move. Sorry about that. But it did keep you alive, which is why I did it.” 

“I don’t want a fake apology, Quentin.” 

“Then get a more emotional one from the original boy when you put us back together. But this is as genuine as I can be, Vix.” Alice can’t help the sharp intake of breath at the nickname, can’t keep from flinching at the sudden sharp pain of it. Quentin blinks. “Maybe I shouldn’t use that? I thought it might work as a way of saying I am sincere, as much as I can be? But it seems to bother you?” 

The worst part is that he isn’t actually being cruel, not to her. She had been cruel as a Niffin, and from what she knows about it, Julia without her shade had been ruthless. Beast Quentin had been both of those things, by all accounts. This Quentin just… doesn’t feel, and his curiosity about that, his attempts to help by making gestures that mean nothing without the emotion that the real Quentin could barely contain… 

Eliot said it was worse than cruelty. Alice agrees wholeheartedly.

“It does bother me. Don’t use it. Also, your apology isn’t convincing because it’s not the first time you did that.” Which, speaking of… She doesn’t want to ask. The others would be furious if they knew. But if she doesn’t ask, then she’s even worse than Quentin had been when he ignored her words. Because she  _ knows  _ it would be the wrong thing, to proceed without this. 

“Oh, the bringing you back from a Niffin thing,” Quentin says, leaning back in his seat. Across the room, little Q looks up. 

“We missed you. We thought you’d be happy once you were back,” he says, floppy bangs falling into his eyes. 

“Or, to put it more clearly, we thought you’d love us again,” Quentin says, toying absently with a loose thread on his sleeve. “Pathetic, I know, and a really bad excuse. And, also, we didn’t think your word when you were a Niffin was reliable.” 

_ “Love me, love me, I don’t exist unless you love me.” _ Alice remembers her own split-self’s mockery - that half of her hadn’t exactly been her Niffin self reborn, but close enough that Quentin’s similar, if more indifferent, dismissal of his feelings for her gets under her skin. “Don’t call yourself pathetic.” 

“Alice. I was practically obsessed with you by that point. It was unhealthy and it was pathetic. Did you know, when I was in the past, at South, you told me I was the best thing in your life? That is truly sad, you deserved better than what I could ever have managed, and I’m sorry I ever got your hopes up. And that I turned you back against your will. I understand now, why you wanted that clarity - and even if I didn’t, it was still wrong. I knew, on some level, but I had myself convinced it would all work out. I wouldn’t lie to myself like that now.” 

Alice thought she wanted this. Thought she wanted Quentin to acknowledge he’d been wrong, even if she no longer wishes she were still a Niffin. But not like this. “You loved me. We weren’t good for each other in the end, but for a little while it was good.” 

“It was,” Quentin agrees. “At least, I remember it was. I don’t understand any of it now, it’s like watching a movie of myself, but you’re right.” 

“Stop, you’re making her more sad, we don’t want to do that!” Q says from his corner, and Quentin jumps, startled. 

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he says. Another empty apology that’s ‘as genuine as he can be.’ God, Alice hates this, hates Quentin’s accidentally brutal calm, hates that Q is a  _ six-year-old _ and trying to protect her from his older self’s inability to care. 

“Are you?” she spits. “Are you  _ capable  _ of being sorry?” 

“Well, that’s an interesting question. I’m capable of regretting that I hurt you, but that seems to be about as far as it goes.” Quentin’s face changes then, becoming almost wistful. It reminds her, horribly, of how he’d looked long ago when he would talk about Julia. It’s not the same, his eyes are still too cold for that, but it’s close and it hurts. Because she can remember what he was like, when it was her he was in love with but he wanted to share his good memories, which almost always involved Julia. 

“I regret that I don’t feel more than that,” he says slowly, drawing Alice from her thoughts. “I - think that I wish I could. Feel more, when I’m with you. Or with Eliot, but, um, that probably hurts you too, I shouldn’t say that, should I?” 

“It was always like that,” Alice says, and she can be honest about that now, after the two of them had found some kind of awful kinship in grieving the man who isn’t dead after all. But sometimes might as well be, in the current situation. “I knew it then, but I ignored it. You were the first person to see me - that’s why you were the best thing that happened to me, Quentin.” She looks at the little boy Q, who is slowly coming closer. She doesn’t expect it, when he takes her hand, but some part of her is glad of it. 

“You saw me, you wanted to be around me, as a friend or a boyfriend,” she says, a small hand tightly gripping her own hand. “But I saw it even then, if you weren’t looking at me, you were looking at him. Like you couldn’t decide.” 

“I… remember that. It was complicated,” Quentin says thoughtfully. “I guess so is this, but - I think it matters, that I want to care, with both of you.” 

“You don’t want to with anyone else?” Alice asks. 

“What if they hurt us again?” That’s Q, not Quentin, and Alice finds herself pulling the little boy in for a hug before she can think twice about it.

“I don’t think - no one wanted to hurt you, Q. It was an accident. But I think it would go better now, after everything that happened.” 

“But Penny said I did what I was supposed to do, does that mean I shouldn’t be here?” he asks, voice muffled, and Alice looks up at Quentin in horror. He, of course, just shrugs. 

“Don’t look at me. I think the Underworld memories are split between us - I know I saw my own memorial, but I don’t remember seeing it, or what Penny said there. Or what he said would happen to all of you. I asked, I’m aware that I did, but…” He shrugs. “The rest is a blank.”

They can deal with that later. From the way Q is shaking in her arms, Alice thinks the little guy can’t handle much more of this topic. So she takes a deep breath and instead asks the question she honestly does not want to ask. But she has to ask it. “Do you two want to be put back together? Because I’m close, I’m really close to getting it right, with the circumstance redesign Julia put together. But if you don’t want it, I won’t do it.” 

“I think the others might object to that,” Quentin says lazily. 

Alice sets her jaw. “I don’t care. What do you want?” 

Q sniffles and leans back enough so that she can see him. And it’s strange - she never saw their Quentin as a little boy, she saw exactly one photograph of him at nine or ten because it was of him and his dad, but there’s more of  _ their  _ Quentin in those big brown eyes, that tiny face, than there ever could be in the adult who physically looks more like the real thing. Little Q tries to smile, and it’s a wavering thing, but real. “I’m not much help when I’m little like this. I miss being who I’m supposed to be. I can do it.” 

Alice looks to Quentin, who shrugs. “I told you, I regret that I can’t feel things. I seem to remember it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, but being like this is… unsettling. I’m all for being put back together, at least then I’ll know where I stand.” 

Not exactly the most enthusiastic consent Alice has ever heard, but she’ll take it.

  
  


** _(vii) turn the page maybe we’ll find a brand new ending_ **

“Will you be less sad when we’re put back together, Eliot?” 

Eliot looks over at Q, reaches out to ruffle his hair. Q makes a face at him, trying to make his hair lay flat again, and Eliot actually finds himself laughing a little. “I hope so,” he says, because he can’t bring himself to lie. Not to this boy that looks so much like Teddy and contains, in a childish way, almost everything about the real Quentin that Eliot loves. He can’t lie to Quentin again, not even this little boy version, not even the cold adult wandering around somewhere. He just keeps thinking, if he’d handled things differently, if he’d given Quentin something more to hold onto, maybe he wouldn’t have spiraled so badly. 

Eliot’s pretty sure that when he says as much to Quentin - and he  _ will  _ say it, because they  _ will  _ get him back - his Quentin will scold him for it and insist it’s not his fault. And maybe that’s so. Maybe there’s more than enough blame to go around. But Eliot knew even then that he was making a mistake, crossing a line.

“I don’t want you to be sad,” Q tells him earnestly. “I saw you… when I died.” 

“I know you did,” Eliot says, keeping his voice gentle. He remembers that little bit of information from first seeing the split Quentins very clearly. In fact, he has a firm plan to punch Penny 40 in the face if he ever sees him again.

“I didn’t like seeing you sad,” Q says. “But Penny said you’d all be OK because of what I did. Does that mean me coming back will hurt you?”

The question hits like a sucker punch, and Eliot pulls Q close, hugging him tightly. For a moment it’s deja vu, hugging his Quentin, hugging Teddy, too many memories crashing together. “You listen to me, OK?” he says, nudging Q back enough to meet his eyes. A floorboard creaking behind him makes him look - Quentin is standing there, head tilted like when he’d first seen Eliot and Margo at the infirmary. Good, if they both hear it it’s likelier his Quentin will remember. 

  
“OK, both of you listen. Penny was either lying through his teeth, or someone lied to him. We were not OK without you. I certainly wasn’t. I know that you’re both upset, in different ways, with most of our friends, but no one wanted to lose you. Once you’re better, we’re all gonna have to talk, but you’re supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be alive.” 

That’s good enough for little Q, who ducks into the reading nook a moment later because they can hear Margo and 23 talking from a room over. He’s still terrified of them, and Eliot wonders how that’s going to manifest once Quentin is back for real. As for the other one, he settles in the window seat, lounging almost in a way that is downright unsettling, because it’s like deja vu in reverse. Eliot can vividly remember himself in that seat, the morning after the threesome, wreathed in cigarette smoke and pretending not to care. Pretending the screaming pain and guilt of everything with Mike hadn’t just gotten  _ worse _ .

The difference - besides the lack of cigarette smoke - is that Quentin, like this, actually doesn’t care. He leans his head back and looks at Eliot, speculative. “I didn’t tell you before, I felt that Penny rushed me through the crossing over process. I was suspicious; it’s one reason I listened to my instincts and followed the pull that brought me back.” 

“So you think he wanted to make sure you couldn’t come back?” Eliot asks. 

“Maybe. No idea. We should revisit this when I’m whole again, I could be missing something given the munchkin has half the memories of my little Underworld trip. But I know I was supposed to die - the Monster was supposed to kill me but Alice had my book and intervened to change things. Maybe the Underworld Library doesn’t approve of that?”

“Still, I never pegged Penny for the type to railroad someone he knows like that,” Eliot says, tipping his head back on the couch to stare at the ceiling. It’s easier when he can’t see Quentin, somehow - the voice is still wrong but just the voice is easier than the voice and the too calm expression, the cold eyes, the way this Quentin never fidgets or sits in ridiculous contortions. “I guess you’re right, we should wait until you can remember everything.” 

Quentin doesn’t say anything for a while, and Eliot turns his head a little, eyes half-closed. With his vision a little unfocused, with Quentin silent and looking out the window and little Q tucked away safe in the reading nook, Eliot can almost imagine he came back and Quentin’s death never happened. That the Quentin in the window seat is his Quentin. But pretending doesn’t make it real, so Eliot turns his gaze back to the ceiling. 

“Why did you say what you did, that day in the park?” Quentin asks, out of the blue. Eliot closes his eyes. 

“I don’t want to discuss it with you right now. That’s something else we should revisit later.” 

“But I won’t be able to ask you later,” Quentin says reasonably. “I’ll be too scared to.” 

Eliot says nothing, and after a moment, Quentin fills the silence. “I remember loving you, you know. So much I could hardly find the words for it. It’s past tense, of course, but only because I’m not currently capable of it. When I get back, I… I’ll be afraid to ask, because I won’t want to push you. I remember that too. Deciding that I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t risk losing your friendship because I couldn’t take no for an answer. But I don’t know how to worry about that right now.”

Eliot focuses entirely on breathing, his chest so tight he’d almost be worried about a heart attack if he didn’t know the cause. Finally, he sits up, looking Quentin straight in the eye. He doesn’t like doing that, not with this Quentin, but right now it’s necessary. “I will  _ not  _ discuss this with you right now. Not with you like this. But I will promise you that you can ask me when you’re yourself again, and it won’t risk anything. Got that?”

Quentin blinks once, twice. “Seems like a fair deal,” he says, and turns his head to stare out the window again.

Three days later, Alice and Julia declare that they’ve finally figured out a ritual that should work. Eliot watches them set up mirrors, a prism, and a chalk circle with symbols, standing at the opposite end of the room with Margo, Quentin, and Q. Q is clinging to his adult self’s leg but not hiding his face, which is progress. Quentin has a hand on his little self’s head, stroking his hair in an absent gesture, eyes fixed on Alice and Julia as they work. 

“Will it hurt?” Q asks, and Alice looks back over her shoulder. 

“It didn’t hurt when I had to put myself back together, but it might sting a little because you’re Quentin’s shade,” she tells him. Q nods, trying to look as grown up as possible. Like Teddy, again, and Eliot has to take a deep, grounding breath.

“It can’t hurt as much as the burning did, right?” Q asks Quentin, whose expression is almost soft looking at his younger self. 

“I don’t think anything can hurt like that. We’ll be all right.” 

“Right,” Alice says, taking a deep breath. “OK, Q, Quentin, I need you two standing on the sigils - Q on the blue one, Quentin on the green. And I need anyone not necessary for this to clear out.” 

Julia takes one last look as Q and Quentin walk over, Q clinging to Quentin’s hand. Eliot thinks she’s triple-checking her work, which he approves of, but then she heads for the door, Margo behind her. But Margo hesitates, looking over her shoulder. “Eliot, you’re -” 

“Not leaving,” Eliot says flatly. Margo frowns, but doesn’t argue. Eliot turns back to the ritual setup to find Alice looking at him with a wry smile. He braces for her to tell him to go, but all she does is shake her head a little. 

“Just stay as far back as you are right now - I was split because of an accident while trying to put Harriet back together, the last thing we need is for you to get split next.” 

Eliot has to agree with that. He focuses on Q and Quentin instead while Alice makes last-minute adjustments, gripping his cane tighter than necessary in his nerves. Q is shaking on the spot, a terrified little boy trying to hide it, and that is so much like how the real Quentin reacts when he’s afraid that it kills Eliot a little. As for the current adult Quentin, he’s almost as inscrutable as ever, but his eyes are too wide, face pale. Apparently he can feel fear, at least. 

It makes it easier for Eliot to give a reassuring smile to both of them.

Alice begins casting, and the magic prickles along Eliot’s skin. She’d warned all of them what would happen, but it’s still horrible to watch little Q start to glow, and then crumple lifelessly to the floor. Quentin clenches his fists, somehow looking even paler in the gold light. There’s a flash from the prism Alice set up, a beam of light that bounces between it, little Q, and Quentin, and then - 

Alice did not warn anyone about the blinding flare of white light that fills the entire room, but from the look on her face she didn’t expect it either. Eliot blinks the spots from his eyes, noticing first the mirrors shattered in their frames and then -

One adult Quentin, sprawled out motionless on the ground, a golden ball of light floating just above his chest, flickering like a candle flame about to go out. 

“No,” Eliot hears himself say, and he isn’t sure - the searing pain in his leg tells him he dropped his cane and ran, but he isn’t aware of anything until he’s on the floor by Quentin’s side. “Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare, Q,” he hisses, and at a loss for anything else to do he presses the ball of light down. He can feel it sear through his palm but that doesn’t matter when it sinks into Quentin’s still chest. 

And then - 

Quentin’s eyes fly open as he chokes on a breath, gold sparks in the brown of his eyes. “Q?” Eliot gasps, dimly aware of the throbbing pain in his hand even as he tugs Quentin closer with his other hand. Quentin is boneless in Eliot’s lap, blinking up at him once, twice, eyes dazed as he puts a hand to his temple. 

“El… I think it worked,” he whispers, and then his eyes slip shut again. But this, at least, is normal sleep or close enough, and in spite of the pain in his leg and his hand, Eliot feels like he can breathe again for the first time since he woke up to a world that didn’t make sense anymore.


	2. I'd Promise You a Heart, You'd Promise to Keep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Quentin alive and whole again, there are several conversations to be had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is further discussion of Quentin's suicide and other issues relating to his s4 mental state, so all relevant warnings apply. 
> 
> As ever, thanks to Maii for reading over my drafts!

** _(viii) can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?_ **

The strangest thing about it all, from Quentin’s perspective at least, is having to integrate two sets of memories, neither of which exactly feel like his own. Being alive again after being dead is surprisingly anti-climactic in itself. He assumes this is mostly because he hadn’t been dead that long. Occasionally, he finds that he forgets to breathe for a moment, and sometimes his heartbeat is too loud in his own ears because for a little while there breathing had been unnecessary and he’d lacked a heartbeat. 

But he doesn’t have, say, the sensory issues that Alice had - although that might be more a ‘back from being a Niffin’ than a ‘back from the dead’ thing anyway. 

Mostly, he just remembers being six and scared, and twenty-six but empty, and in both versions wanting answers for why the people he cares about didn’t seem to care about him until he was dead. And the thing is, he knew back in that parking lot in the Underworld that he was wrong to think that, he knows that all the more now. Because he - he remembers falling asleep as a little boy with his head on Eliot’s leg, remembers hugs from him and from Alice, how quickly his child’s love had sprung up in their defense against even his adult self. 

His cold adult self, who had looked at them and remembered different kinds of love - first love trying to settle into friendship, jagged and unsure and hopeful, and love that lives in his bones, so deep it will never go away even though he can’t  _ have it _ now. He remembers the remembering, the looking at love like a puzzle, and part of him is still thinking like that. Except it’s everything he’s looking at that way, his two sets of memories and the fact that he’s alive again. 

He doesn’t know what to say to anyone, and they don’t seem to know what to say to him. 

He came back missing some of his scars. Not all of them, but he thinks the ones he still has are the older ones, the ones that sort of… became part of his concept of himself. His magic tore him apart and then put him back together, he’s not exactly sure what it drew on to do that, but he has the scar on his knee where an accident with a toy car, a bike, and a tree ended with him stumbling into the house with his knee dripping blood. He has - a few scars on his arms, fewer than he’d had before but the longest ones are still there which is kind of annoying. 

He doesn’t have the scars he picked up from the various crises of recent years, and he’s not exactly sure if his shoulder rebuilt entirely wooden or what the fuck happened there. His shoulder and arm function like they should, and he’s kind of leaving it at that. He also discovered that the tattoo which was meant to house a cacodemon and ended up trapping Alice-the-Niffin is gone. There’s something in that, probably. He isn’t sure what.

But he also has a thin scar on his palm that he did not have when he died, because that scar came from a broken tile in another lifetime. He’s trying not to think too hard about that one. 

There’s a new scar too, on his chest, over his heart. It’s a shiny burn scar that looks like a sunburst on his skin, and Eliot bears the match to it on his left palm. 

_ “I will  _ ** _not _ ** _ discuss this with you right now. Not with you like this. But I will promise you that you can ask me when you’re yourself again, and it won’t risk anything. Got that?” _

Quentin is - glad he came back. Or at least, he doesn’t regret it. Feeling glad is sort of beyond him, just now, but lack of regret seems like a good intermediate step. The trouble is not knowing what to do with being back. He remembers the things he said to his friends, and he knows that he still doesn’t regret it. They didn’t care, or they acted like they didn’t, so that he could stand there with Penny to see them mourn him and think only _ why didn’t you care this much when I was alive? _

But his six-year-old self didn’t have the words for that yet, a child with a man’s memories, and his shadeless self hadn’t remembered the bonfire. Anyway, he’d have explained it in terms so clinical it wouldn’t have helped. But Quentin, now - he’s in one piece again but he doesn’t think he’s whole. He doesn’t know what he is, and until he knows he doesn’t know what to do. 

He woke up back in the penthouse, doesn’t know why they relocated again, though he thinks he heard Kady say something to Margo about McAllisters. Which, yay. Them again. What fun. On the other hand, it means a steady Internet connection that lets Quentin watch Netflix on the couch at one in the morning because he can’t sleep, so there’s that.

On the little tablet screen, he’s watching Captain Janeway talk to the newly-disconnected Seven of Nine about being a human. She’s not having any of it, she hates it, and Quentin is kind of right there with her. Sympathizing with someone who wants to go back to being a mindless drone is probably not good, but there it is. Still, he’s watched almost the entire run of Voyager multiple times (except Death Wish, which he vaguely remembers watching as a kid but he’s not allowed to rewatch now) so he knows that Seven eventually learns to be human, with the help of several other characters. Is there someone who can tell him what he’s supposed to do now, how he’s supposed to handle his own return to being human? It would be nice.

“I don’t fucking get you, man.” 

Quentin jumps at the unexpected voice, craning his neck to see 23 glowering at him. Quentin stares back levelly. “What’s to get.” 

“You die, it leaves half this group fucking wrecked -” 

“I don’t think that’s an accurate description,” Quentin can’t help but say, bitter. 

“You fucking killed yourself and you’re acting like a damned victim,” 23 says, crossing his arms. Quentin tilts his head and smiles, it feels like his shadeless self’s thin cold smiles, it feels like he should be tasting poison on his tongue. Maybe not everything came back. 

“Look, you don’t even like me, you and I don’t have anything to settle,” Quentin says. “And I get that. The Beast me in your timeline… I get why you don’t like me, all right? But that means stay the fuck out of this, because it’s not your business.” 

“You hurt Julia and that makes it my business.” 

“She hurt me too,” Quentin says, quiet and tense. “And that’s for me and her to sort out, eventually. Not for you. I get that you love her.” Or he gets that 23 thinks he loves Julia, though whether he really does or just sees his Julia reborn is something no one but 23 himself can really answer. But then, Quentin spends each day with echoes of another lifetime in his brain that means the world to him, so he figures it’s not his place to judge how 23 understands the idea of timeline counterparts. 

“I get that you love her,” he repeats, “but how she and I handle our shit isn’t for you to meddle with. Now, did you need something, or can I go back to being an insomniac in peace?” 

23 stares at him, scowling. “You said you saw your timeline’s me when you were dead, right?” 

“Yeah. He tried pretty hard to convince me to move on.” As he says that, Quentin finds himself wondering if maybe what he saw was altered. Eliot insisted that Penny was lying, so maybe… It’s a thought, and one he’ll have to give more time to. “Why?” 

“Because I saw him too, while I was away. Didn’t you wonder why I listened to you, at the Seam?” 

“Actually, I hadn’t gotten to thinking about you, no offense. But now that you mention it, that is odd. You didn’t even think I could play Push successfully, so why did you listen to me in such a key moment? I’m assuming it’s important, since you brought it up.” 

23 perches on the arm of the couch where Quentin is curled up. Quentin eyes him, surprised and wary, thinking of an egg in the fire. He supposes he can’t blame 23, really - they never shared anything but that awkward misadventure, and maybe it was well-intentioned. Who can tell, with 23. 

“He told me to, Coldwater. He said ‘when the time comes, remember I said do it. Do what he says.’ Now, I don’t know why. But when you told me to take Alice and run it… clicked in my head, that he was talking about that moment. I’ve had people in my head before. The Beast, for literal fucking years. This wasn’t like that, but looking back at it after…” 

“You think I got railroaded, and that you were tricked into helping make that happen, maybe even mind-fucked into it,” Quentin says slowly. 

“Yep. And you’re right. I don’t like you. It’s not just the Beast you. You’re reckless as shit, and I think you’re dangerous to be around because of it.” 

“And you think I’m useless,” Quentin adds. “You know, it’s kinda funny, I actually did explode.” 

23 stares at him. “That isn’t funny at all, what the fuck.” 

“No, the original joke wasn’t either.” 

23 scowls all the harder. Quentin feels a tiny glow of satisfaction, and maybe that should worry him, but hey. Maybe it’s better that he works out his bitchiness on the one person least likely to actually care, given how much he already doesn’t like him. “Look, Coldwater. I don’t fucking like you, and I probably never will. But I like even less being roped into assisting a suicide. That’s some screwed up shit right there, and I figure you deserved to know.” 

Quentin runs a hand through his hair. “Well. Thank you for that,” he says, and finds that he means it. 

23 eyes him suspiciously. “Right. So, shadeless you, he seemed to think no one gave a shit until you were dead. Is that what you think?” 

It’s certainly what Quentin  _ had  _ thought, seeing his own funeral. But even then he’d known he was being unfair to at least some of his friends, and now… “I don’t know what I think,” he admits, and there’s an odd comfort in being honest with Penny 23. It takes Quentin a moment, but then he realizes it’s because of the same reason it’s easy to be nastier to him. 23 already doesn’t like him, he just said so. That means Quentin can’t hurt him. He can insult him, or offend him, but he can’t  _ hurt  _ him, and that makes him safer to talk to than anyone else while his head is still such a mess.

“Well, let me tell you, no one was OK. Not even me - seeing you die was pretty fucking shitty, for the record, especially realizing other-me had wanted me to make sure it happened. But Alice? She fought me every second, she lost it. Julia got all quiet and shocked and wouldn’t let me near her, she fell apart crying and Kady caught her - and Kady herself looked like someone had hit her. I thought Margo was gonna turn me into an ice statue when I told her, she kept telling me to take it back and stop lying. And Eliot? I have never seen that man so broken, and I’ve seen his ghost in my own timeline after the fucking awful way he and Margo died there. I know you know Alice and Eliot care, but  _ everyone _ cared, Coldwater.”

It’s all beginning to sound like the things Quentin saw really were altered from what actually happened. If what 23 says is true - and whatever else, Quentin doesn’t think 23’s a liar - then their original Penny was setting him up to die, for reasons unknown. The most likely, from Quentin’s perspective, is that the Underworld Library doesn’t like people meddling with the ends written out in their life books, so he couldn’t be allowed to live much longer. Maybe it’s that, maybe it’s something else, he’s probably never going to know.

He takes some comfort in how different Penny 40 was, in the Underworld - they never exactly got along, but their squabbling had become familiar and even kind of fun by the end, just how they talked to each other. He’d hate to think that under it Penny had  _ always  _ been willing to help him kill himself, and would much rather think that the Underworld changed him.

“The thing that sticks is, it looked like most of them only cared once I died,” he says finally, because it’s true. 

“You know that’s not true, come on.” 

“Do I?” Quentin asks.

“Nobody’s as upset as they all were for someone that only mattered because he was dead,” 23 insists. 

Quentin looks at his tablet, at the frozen characters on the screen. “No, I guess not. But it still felt like it, and that means a lot of uncomfortable conversations in my future. But, I guess I should just be glad I’m here to have them, all things considered.” 

23 doesn’t respond to that, just leaves, and Quentin starts playing his show again. He switches seasons after the episode’s done, this time going to a season one episode he barely pays attention to except for one line - “I would like a name,” says the holographic doctor who will also learn to be a person. There was a lot of that on this particular Star Trek actually. Not just on this one, but still. 

_ I would like a name. _ Why does that shake him up so much? He has a name, he has - well.  _ Does  _ he have much of an identity, since he woke up? And will it matter? Because if the Underworld Library objected to his book being altered, won’t they object all the more to his escaping the afterlife at the last damn second? Does that mean he’s going to be set up to die again? 

Quentin realizes he doesn’t want that. He wants - he wants to live. It sucks a lot of the time, but he wants to be here, he wants to stay, he’s glad he ran and he wants to care again. Which means he has to start talking to people. He has to start figuring out what was real, what was in his head, what was just an accident. 

He wants to be real again. How about that.

  
  


** _(ix) I would gamble and win to lift me high above the din_ **

Margo comes out the next morning in search of coffee, then almost drops the mug at her first sip because she knows Quentin made this. It’s one of the mysteries of that boy that he can only cook a very few things without disaster striking, yet he makes some of the best coffee Margo has ever tasted. But she hasn’t had Quentin’s coffee since - 

_ Margo goes with 23 back to the penthouse the morning after… after, because she’d stashed most of Eliot’s things there only they ended up at the Cottage anyway. It’s something to do. She needs something to do. And she can’t sit with Eliot any longer, it feels like a betrayal to leave him with Alice but she can’t bear the blank grief in his eyes. Alice is almost as bad, and Margo flees from them both really.  _

_ There’s still coffee in the pot and she’s too tired to dump it and make fresh, so she just pours a cup and microwaves it. She takes a sip and it’s stale but it’s  _ ** _Quentin’s_ ** _ , and suddenly all she can remember is the morning in the Cottage kitchen when she and Eliot discovered how good his coffee was, how they’d teased him and he’d ducked his head but he was grinning and - and -  _

_ The cup slips from her shaking fingers, shattering on the linoleum. _

Margo shakes off the memory. Quentin’s back, and yeah, things are fucked to shit as usual, he’s like the living version of the ghost he so briefly was, but at least he’s not a kid and a shadeless asshole anymore. And not dead anymore. They can work with living ghost. 

Speaking of, Quentin is actually outside on the balcony with Kady of all people. It looks like they’re having a serious conversation, but somehow Kady hadn’t been high on Margo’s list for people who need to talk to Quentin. But maybe that’s why he’s talking to her, maybe it’s easier to talk to her? 

Kady comes in before Margo’s done her coffee, and she pauses at the counter. “I think Coldwater’s making progress. He was asking me about meds and magical therapists.” 

“Magical therapists is good, but can’t he just get his meds from wherever he… used to…” Margo trails off at the grim twist to Kady’s mouth. “No. Don’t fucking tell me -” 

“Fogg told him his very first day magic meant he wouldn’t need his meds. He got the idea that he had to hand them in or he’d be rejected, and that they fuck up magic,” Kady says, and Margo - Margo suddenly really, really wishes that she had decked Henry Fogg when she had the chance. 

“If I ever see Fogg again, I’m going to punch him so hard he’ll be shitting his own teeth for a week,” she says after a long moment. “Please tell me you told Quentin that is absolute  _ bullshit. _ ” 

“Oh yeah. I promised to get him names of local therapists who are magical, but I made it clear Fogg was wrong. He said he gave his pills to Fogg right before signing the waiver.” 

The fucking waiver. Fogg had gone to Quentin’s memorial and burned that waiver, right in front of them. How - how dare he even go to that when by taking Q’s meds away he’d helped cause - It’s not entirely fair, of course. Meds aren’t a cure-all, Margo knows, and Quentin himself, or the Shadeless Asshole version, had said it was his own choices, but Fogg’s little stunt certainly didn’t help. It had definitely made what happened more likely  _ to  _ happen.

How dare he show up with them to fucking mourn. 

After Kady leaves, Margo takes her coffee and goes out on the little patio. She doesn’t exactly have a plan for what she’s going to say to Quentin, but what comes out is, “Tell me you don’t really think we wanted you to die.” 

Quentin, looking out at the city skyline, doesn’t turn to look at her. “No, I don’t think that. I don’t even think you were trying to be cruel, if I’m honest. I think it just didn’t occur to anyone to look twice at me, and I don’t know if that’s my fault or just the circumstances or what it was. I just know  _ that  _ it was, and when it came to it, I forgot I had any reason to run.” 

He forgot. That’s somehow worse than saying he thought he didn’t have any reasons. Margo swallows hard. “You can’t do that again,” she says hoarsely. 

Quentin does turn then, and the intent look on his face isn’t the coldness of his shadeless self, but it’s that look he gets when he won’t be moved, like how this whole fucking mess started when he declared he’d stay in the castle. “I don’t plan to, but do you really think it’s something you can just  _ command  _ of me, former High King or not?”

“If that’s what it’ll take!” Margo runs a hand through her hair. “I had - I had a fucking plan, you know? I didn’t see how bad you were, fine, that bit’s on me, but I’m not stupid. I knew you couldn’t be great. I was gonna - after we got El back I was gonna drag you both off somewhere quiet and safe, and it was all supposed to be all right.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me that?!” Quentin demands. 

“Because I didn’t think you were so alone here you’d get bad enough to kill yourself! I thought you knew that once it was over it’d be all right!” 

“How the  _ fuck  _ was I supposed to know that, Margo?”

Margo opens her mouth, then closes it. “I don’t know.”

Quentin throws up his hands in frustration, and irked as Margo is, she’s weirdly glad of it. Glad to see something of  _ their  _ Quentin, who could be a sweetheart and a brat in equal measure, whose hands were always moving when he talked, who was restless and alive. Fuck, how had she missed it? “I don’t know how the fuck I didn’t see it,” she says, staring at him. “I really don’t, Q. Looking at you now, even thinking about it after shadeless you snapped at me…” 

“At least you weren’t watching it happen for months without noticing,” Quentin says with a shrug. “Can you tell me why you didn’t ask, though? You knew I came back with the Monster, didn’t you realize that - I get that you couldn’t stay, I sure as hell know how much it, it hurt to see that thing walking Eliot’s body around. I get why you left, but Margo… Didn’t you know it would hurt me too? It, it only would have taken a minute to check in…” 

His voice is wavering, his eyes too bright, but he’s  _ not  _ actually crying, and somehow that makes Margo’s own eyes fill. The fact that Quentin of all people is not actually crying. “I don’t know. I was focused on El, and then the thing with Josh - and I thought there was time. I thought there’d be time. And then there wasn’t, and I’m standing at that damned fire holding the crown I put on your head and I looked for you, I thought, he’s gotta be here, I can fucking see ghosts, and you -” 

“I was, though. Penny, he brought me there.” 

“Yeah, you say that, but, Q. I _ looked for you _ . I looked, and if I saw you I was gonna… gonna tell you not to fucking leave, to fucking haunt the shit out of us till we figured out how to get you back.” 

Quentin’s brow furrows. “You - really?”

“Yes,  _ really _ !” Margo says. She reaches forward, fingers wrapping around Quentin’s wrists. “You look at me, Coldwater, and you listen. We hadn’t started planning yet. We were all fucking shellshocked, El and Quinn were fucking shattered. But that funeral? That wasn’t telling you goodbye. That was - it was remembering you, and purging some of the grief so we could get started on what we still had to do. And you know what top of that list was gonna be as soon as we could think again? Finding out if there was any way to get you back, up to and including storming the gates of Heaven or Hell if we had to.” 

Quentin stares at her. “Penny said -” 

“Yeah, well, he’s a lying sack of shit these days. No one was gonna just  _ let you go _ .”

“I -” Quentin looks away, fidgeting as much as he can with Margo still gripping his wrists. “I don’t know what you - what do you -” 

“Look at me,” Margo says again, and waits until he does. “What I’m saying, what I want, is for you to know that we fucking need you, OK? Whatever he told you about doing what you were supposed to do or that we’d be fine without you, it was a fucking lie. I want you to remember that. And Q, I’m sorry I didn’t see before. I should have.” And if not her, someone else should have, like Julia for example, but Margo doesn’t say that. This isn’t about casting blame. “But you could have come to us too.” 

A flash of temper in Quentin’s eyes, and that shouldn’t make Margo feel better but it does, because anger takes energy. If Quentin is angry, it means he’s coming back to them. “I didn’t think -” 

“Didn’t think you were welcome, yeah. And that shit’s on me, at least lately. On both of us from further back because we got caught up in shit, but - OK. Consider this blanket permission from here to fucking eternity. You feel like you’re slipping, you need to talk to someone? You can come to me, and if I try to blow you off, you remind me of this conversation, you hear? Because I’m not losing you again, you’re  _ ours  _ and you have been since El came back from taking you to the exam rambling about the cute nerd he’d just met. You’re ours, and the fucking afterlife can’t  _ have you _ yet.”

“I - Margo, I - all, all right,” Quentin says, voice wavering, and, shit. Margo uses her grip on Quentin’s wrists to yank him to his feet, and then into a crushing hug. For just this once, she can’t even complain about him crying into her hair. 

She’s too glad he’s here, warm and alive and clinging to her, to give a flying fuck about her damn hair.

  
  


** _(x) every traveler please come home_ **

Julia waits a couple of days. She’d seen Quentin and Margo hugging it out on the patio the other morning, and hadn’t been sure if she was glad to see progress or angry that it wasn’t easier for her. It should be, shouldn’t it? They’ve known each other for so long… 

But maybe that’s the problem. There have been times when Julia felt like Quentin didn’t see her. Like sometimes he saw this idealized picture of her, but more often that he saw some past version of her. They were twenty-four and he thought she should still be fifteen, that they both should be, she remembers thinking that on the very day that they tested at Brakebills. 

The thing is, she’d never considered the possibility that if Quentin did that, maybe so did she, only differently. She thought because she knew Quentin’s warning signs, the way his bad times went, that she’d always know them. Still, the fact remains that Quentin should have known he could talk to her, he didn’t have to go through it alone. He’d known she was worried, she’d said as much more than once, tried to make him think about if helping the Monster was really the right plan… 

After Quentin died, for that awful week before he came back, Julia had mostly been in shock. She’d believed Penny that he just hadn’t been fast enough, or at least had wanted to. She’d tried not to think about _ “Break my bones and strangle me, too tired to care anymore,” _ and  _ “If I get cut I get cut.” _

But then little Q, and shadeless Quentin…

Julia shakes off the thoughts and knocks on Quentin’s bedroom door. She doesn’t have to speculate because Quentin is here, back and alive and… if not precisely his usual self, getting there. So she’s going to ask, and clear this up once and for all.

Quentin looks tired when he opens the door; he always looks tired these days, and when Julia tries to think back, the last time he didn’t look tired was probably during the Key Quest. It makes her insides squirm, so she tries not to think about it too hard. 

“So, you and me now, huh?” he asks, quiet. 

Julia bristles. “You don’t think we need to talk?” 

“No, I absolutely think we need to talk,” Quentin concedes, and steps aside so she can enter the room before he closes the door and leans against it, hands shoved in his jean pockets. “Look, shadeless me was a dick, I wouldn’t have said things the way he did.” 

“But you would have said them?” 

Quentin shrugs, looking away, and then he lifts his head again, making himself not hide from her. “Yeah, at least some of it, I would have said. Because here’s the thing, Julia. In my head, I get that this isn’t true, but Penny took me to my own funeral, and -” 

“And you saw we were upset -!” 

“I saw you gave a shit when I was dead, but no one fucking asked if I was all right when I was alive!”

“We spent most of our lives telling each other everything, and you couldn’t come to me!” 

“When, Julia? When you were trying to tell me to give up on the man I - on one of my best friends, or when you were worried about your goddess problem? And I’m not saying you shouldn’t have wanted to fix your own shit, but you were already this close to benching me, how the hell could I tell -” 

“Maybe you wouldn’t have died!”  _ Give up on the man I - _ No. She would know if Quentin was in love with Eliot, wouldn’t she? Although it does explain a lot. 

Quentin opens his mouth, then closes it. “Maybe not. Maybe El would be dead though, and that’s - not a better outcome, that’s just differently horrible, all right? But I just - you were with me every day, Julia. And I spent every day feeling like I was screaming, and no one even bothered to look at me. I came back from sinking that poor guy’s body with the Monster draped over me and my shirt partway undone, and you - you barely looked at me. I know you were worried about 23, but… Why?”

Julia thinks back, trying to remember. She remembers arguing with Penny, remembers the whooshing sound of the Monster and Quentin returning, but she doesn’t - she remembers that Quentin just sat there on that bench for a while, but she’d been so focused on the Monster and Penny, she doesn’t remember even seeing him get up, just that when Penny broke the psychic link Quentin was with her trying to help when Penny started seizing. 

But she does remember seeing, out of the corner of her eye, the Monster practically nuzzling Quentin’s neck and the side of his face. Which is awful enough but with what Quentin just said, with what she thinks she might have missed regarding him and Eliot… Oh God.

“I don’t know,” she forces out through suddenly numb lips. “I was focused on Penny because I thought what he’d offered to do might kill him. And when the Monster choked you, Q, you promised me it was a bluff, that you were just manipulating him.” 

“I was,” Quentin agrees, shrugging one shoulder. “But more because if he killed me, I was sure he’d kill Eliot next. Not so much because I cared about dying.”

Julia stumbles back a step, sinks down to sit on the edge of Quentin’s bed. After a long, silent moment, Quentin crosses the room and sits down next to her. He offers his hand, and Julia flashes back to that bonfire, to gripping Kady’s hand like the only lifeline she had left. She remembers being six years old on their first field trip, their teacher’s idea of the buddy system including holding hands. 

She takes Quentin’s hand and remembers how small their hands used to be. They never seemed like it at the time, but she knows now that they were. “I didn’t know. Whatever you think I ignored, it wasn’t on purpose, Q. And you could have told me. You could have trusted me.” 

“Sometimes I think both of us are still mad about the start of all this,” Quentin says, and both of them are looking at their joined hands, not at each other. “Me leaving you outside the magical world, you trapping me in the world of my worst nightmare. Maybe we never - never really trusted each other again, because I was convinced you wouldn’t help me if you knew everything and you…” 

“I didn’t even think to ask you anything, I just assumed I knew it all,” Julia admits. “So who apologizes to who this time?” 

“Hell if I know,” Quentin says, and they look up at the same time, meeting each other’s eyes. Julia remembers those eyes at four, at ten, at twelve and sixteen and twenty-one, every age between and up till this moment. 

“I can’t lose you again,” she says, voice tight. “Losing you got my magic back but Q - I told myself I was going to make that mean something but it was never going to  _ mean enough, _ do you hear me?  _ Never _ .” 

“You love your magic.” 

“I love you too. You are the only real family I have left, Quentin. My mother is even more of a joke than yours, my sisters… they’re never gonna understand me now and they were shit at it before. I just - I need you, all right? You have no idea how it felt when Penny told me, when we had to plan your funeral. I used to tell myself I had to be ready, just in case, did you know that?” 

Quentin pales, and maybe Julia shouldn’t be telling him this, but she can’t seem to help it. “I told myself I had to be, because if you - you only had to succeed once. I wasn’t ready, Q. I’ll never be ready. You need to not die on us again, you need to stay. Do you understand?” 

Quentin nods, using his grip on Julia’s hand to pull her into a hug. “I did run,” he says quietly, the words a murmur in her ear. “A bit too late, but it worked, so it still kinda counts, doesn’t it?” 

Julia wraps her arms around him and thinks of that hug in the doorway when they’d just gotten their memories back. Thinks of countless hugs over twenty-two years, thinks of a King of Hearts card with her best friend’s face as she tosses it into the flames. She presses her face into Quentin’s shoulder, the soft cloth of his old sweater, and cries. From the way Quentin is shaking as he holds onto her, she thinks he might be crying too. How much have they all cried since this started? Is it finally over now? 

“This has to be over, Q. We can’t keep running these crazy risks, not forever, not like this.” 

“I can’t even argue with you. Trouble is, shit keeps finding us.” 

He’s right. But Julia used to be a goddess. She should be able to do something about that, shouldn’t she? Before they lose again. They got lucky this first time - this second time, part of her thinks, because  _ Kady’s _ Penny is still gone and they lost their shot to fix that. That can’t happen again, it just can’t. They got lucky here, from nothing but the sheer weirdness of Mirror Realm rules, Quentin’s magic being exactly the right fit, and fucking  _ Old Gods cake. _

They can’t have odds that long again. Julia isn’t sure how to make sure they don’t, but holding onto her oldest friend, when he’d been dead and gone and out of reach, Julia promises herself that she is going to figure it out. 

  
  


** _(xi) even the man in the moon disappeared, somewhere in the stratosphere_ **

Alice asks Quentin to go for a walk with her - she doesn’t know if they’ll end up shouting at each other like he and Julia did, she just knows she doesn’t really want to talk to him with their friends in earshot. At first they walk in silence, or as much silence as is ever available in New York City. Eventually, they settle on a park bench, both of them watching a group of kids play soccer. Or, at least looking in that direction; Alice at least can barely see them.

“I did mean it, you know,” Quentin says abruptly. “Or he meant it, or - I still don’t know how to talk about my split halves, but the apology, for at the Seam. I’m not sorry you were safe, but I am sorry I told 23 to drag you out instead of just telling both of you to run.” 

Alice looks over to find Quentin watching her, and she does know him well enough to be sure he’s not lying. Even so… “Do you have any idea what it was like to  _ watch you die, _ with him holding me back so that I couldn’t do anything but watch?” Her voice is low and tight, the only way to keep from either screaming or crying.

Quentin flinches, but Alice has to give him this; he doesn’t look away from her. “In terms of everything but being held back, yes. I do know what it’s like. That’s one reason I’m sorry for it. I’ve been in that position… more than once, really, and I - I should never have done that to you.” 

Alice remembers burning up when she became a Niffin - when she’d made Quentin watch even though it was to stop the Beast before he killed Q, and in some of her darker moments in that week he was dead she’d wondered if some part of him had been paying her back for that. She doesn’t think so now, though, and she thinks mentioning it would insult them both. But she’s not sure what makes more than once for Quentin. She doesn’t ask, because it doesn’t matter. She doubts it’s her business, and she can probably guess anyway, more or less.

“Then you should have known better,” is what she tells Quentin instead, because that is true. “And you took my choice away! Again! I know your split halves said before you thought Niffin me was lying. I don’t - I wasn’t, but I can see why you thought that. I might have thought the same thing in your shoes, we’ll never know. But Quentin. You knew what you were doing. On so many levels you knew what you might be making happen.” 

“I didn’t -” 

“You didn’t know you were going to stop running, but you knew there was a chance you wouldn’t be fast enough,” Alice snaps. 

Quentin frowns. “I don’t know if I was thinking that clearly, Alice. All I remember is thinking that I wanted you to be safe, and getting 23 to grab you would make sure of it. I don’t know how much I understood…” He hesitates, then says, “But that’s just an excuse. I was fucked up, but I do know better. You’re right. Making that call for you was wrong, and I am sorry.”

She wants to believe him. Actually, the thing is that she does believe him. “You know why I asked your halves if they wanted to be put back together, right?” He didn’t look away from her, so Alice doesn’t look away from him now. 

“I’m guessing because you didn’t want to make the choice for me like I did for you.” 

“Exactly.” Alice takes a deep breath, braces herself. “I love you, and I am so glad you’re back with us. Not - we’re not good together long-term, we were already agreed on that. I want to be friends, I said so in the kitchen after our trip to South, I meant it. I still mean it. But Quentin, I swear to God. If you ever make a call like that for me again, you and I are done. For good. Do you understand?” 

Quentin nods. “I understand perfectly.”

Alice nods once, curtly. Then she pulls Quentin into a tight hug. “Never throw yourself on the wire like that again, you got it?” she whispers fiercely, holding on as Quentin gets with the program and hugs her back. Apparently she surprised him. “You’re not allowed on final quests anymore, and no more stupid heroics. We need you more here with us, all right?” 

“That, um. That seems to be the common message,” Quentin says, his voice wavery and choked with tears. 

“Good. Listen to us for once!” She lets him go and sits back, smoothing down her hair. “Margo said she told you we were going to work at getting you back. I was already researching things, so I mean it when I say we need you here.”

“Hopefully we’ll never need your research, for any of us,” Quentin says with a wobbly smile.

“Hopefully,” Alice agrees, thinking of Penny and how that plan did not work out. She hasn’t gotten rid of the things she’d started looking into, about golems and bone-knitting, a few other options. The Isiac faith of antiquity has some interesting stuff. With their group, it’s better to be prepared, she knows. “So, um, Eliot and I found… The night of your funeral, we all stayed at the Cottage, Eliot and I both ended up crashed in your room. Yes, it should have been as odd as it sounds, but we were both too numb for that, I think.” 

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the card she’s still carrying - herself as the Queen of Spades. Quentin takes one look and blushes, ducking his head. “Oh, that,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I knew Jules found the deck that I was tinkering with… I saw her burn the card that looked like me, but, um…” 

“It’s flattering, really. But if you want it back…” 

“No,” Quentin says, smiling. “You should keep it, if you want to. God, I made those so early - the day we moved to the Cottage, actually. You know I was down about not getting my discipline, but I was glad to be at the Cottage, and that night, I just… It was nice to see what I  _ could  _ do, even if I didn’t know what I was  _ supposed  _ to do.”

Alice remembers how they’d been then. Her focus, at the time, had of course been Charlie, but in hindsight there is something… soft, almost sweet about those early days. Looking back, she can see Eliot and Margo’s overtures were more or less genuine where at the time she’d thought they were setting her up to be the butt of some joke later. It had happened before, with popular types, and she’d learned to be wary of it. And Quentin… she remembers his genuine enthusiasm for her discipline even as his own lack of one ate at him.

She can easily see him sitting up that night, toying with a card deck and putting the faces of the new people in his world on cards. As card suit royalty, which is a little ironic in hindsight. 

“I’d like to keep it,” she says with a little smile. 

“Then it’s yours,” Quentin says. “Alice, I… how are you, really? Penny, um, he said Zelda was gonna offer you the Library, but I don’t know if that happened yet or -” 

“It hasn’t, and I don’t think we can necessarily trust anything Penny told you, though he did tell you the truth about how Julia’s magic returned, didn’t he?” Alice asks, and when Quentin nods, she continues, “I don’t know what I’ll do about the Library if they come calling, but… You know what I keep thinking about? The Secrets trial. When I told you I don’t know what I’m capable of. I still don’t. But I was going to find a way to get you back whatever it took, I’ve done things with the prisms and Mirror splits that I never thought I could do. And in Modesto… magic actually helped, Q. No caveat - well, not to that. The Library went after my friend and convinced her to join up, but that’s the Library, not the magic itself. The magic just did something good, it cleaned up the water supply.”

She taps the playing card against her palm. Queen of Spades, and the two of them are a former king and queen who never really did much with their thrones, one way or another. “And I thought about you too, how you talked about mending. You talked it down but you didn’t see your eyes light up when you mended that mug. I think… I think I want to figure out how magic can actually  _ help _ , not just patch up one disaster by causing another one. You know?” 

“I think that sounds amazing. And that you’ll kick ass at it.” 

For a moment, it’s like the years and the fights and the ways they tore each other up fall away. Alice isn’t ever going to forget that day at the Seam, but she also won’t forget this moment, or a little boy hugging her tight. Maybe they really can be all right after all.

She’s tired of things that hurt, she wants things that help, that heal. And for the first time Alice really hopes that this,  _ them _ , knowing each other too well and not well enough, can be a friendship that will be one of those healing things. 

It’s good to hope for, anyway.

  
  


** _(xii) you and I right or wrong, there’s no other one after this time I spent alone_ **

Eliot has been doing his best to give Quentin a degree of space since he woke up, because he deserves to settle things with the others as privately as possible. But, still, within a day of Quentin waking up everyone knows that if they’re looking for him, just ask Eliot. He refuses to be ashamed of this. He spent a week in a world where Quentin didn’t exist and that was a week too long, so yeah. He’s going to make sure he knows where Q is now, at least for a while. 

Hopefully he’ll be able to break the habit before it gets a stalkery vibe instead of a possibly-overprotective-but-oh-well one, but he can’t quite bring himself to care about it just yet. And so, he saw Quentin and Margo hugging on the patio four days after Quentin woke up, which seemed to be the thing that broke the ice, he could hear the raised voices that had been part of the conversation with Julia but he also knows they both came out of Julia’s room red-eyed but seemingly happy. 

He saw Quentin and Alice leave to go for a walk together a couple days ago, and he might have camped out on the patio so he’d see when they came back. He knows there was a chat with Kady and something with 23, but he didn’t actually see those. The only one Quentin hasn’t talked to is him. 

Or, no. That’s not exactly true. They talk all the time, but they haven’t been alone together since Q was two people. Eliot isn’t sure if it’s deliberate or by chance. He hopes it’s the latter, because he’s not sure how the former can’t end in a mess. 

Still, he thinks, rubbing his right thumb over his left palm, he can’t say he has any regrets about what he’s done lately. He doesn’t regret watching over Little Q, or even dealing with mostly-shadeless Quentin. For once, he’s all but certain he handled it in the best way possible. It’s an odd sort of certainty, it feels kind of fragile so Eliot tries not to poke too hard at it. He told Quentin to ask the more important questions when he was whole again, and for now Eliot wants to wait and see if Q comes to him. He has a feeling it’s important to be patient. 

So here he is, out on the patio alone at sunset, watching the city below. He likes to sit out here, likes the unfamiliar - or, well,  _ newly _ -familiar by now - view and the sounds of the city that are never quite the same. The way real weather actually changes as clouds cover the sun or the wind picks up. It reminds him that he’s no longer in his head, and with Quentin alive again and recovering, he has no reason to wish himself back there where a memory-echo of Q would provide some hollow comfort. 

“Eliot?” 

It’s as if Eliot summoned him. They were almost that well attuned, once. Eliot rubs his thumb over his newest scar again. “Hey Q.” 

“Mind if I join you?” 

“No, not at all,” Eliot says, turning to look at Quentin as he settles in the other chair. It’s almost stunning, the relief he feels when he watches Quentin curl up in one of his weird contortions. The shadeless Quentin sat up straight, feet flat to the ground. The little boy Q had mostly sat cross-legged on chairs or window seats meant for adults and so too big for his little legs to touch the floor. 

“I sat out here a lot - before,” Quentin says after a few minutes of quiet. “It’s a good place to think. Sitting outside in general is good for thinking.” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Eliot says. “Didn’t do much thinking till recently.” 

“What were you doing then?”

Eliot laughs, bitter and sharp. “Trying to drink myself into oblivion, what do you think?”

Quentin sits up a little, eyes narrowing, and no, he is not going to actually dare to tell Eliot off about this, is he? “Why - why would you do that? You just got out of the hospital, why would you -” 

Holy shit. He actually is trying to lecture Eliot about this.

“Oh, I don’t know, Quentin, maybe because I woke up and you were  _ dead _ !” Eliot snaps. “I hear you’ve been smoothing over the shit your shadeless self said, well, I don’t need that if that’s why you’re here. I could take that, I don’t care that half of you was a cold bastard, the other half was cuddly enough to make up for it. I’m not upset about that shit.” 

“Well clearly you’re not too happy with me, Eliot, so then -” 

“I’m upset that you were dead!” Eliot yells, and belatedly twists his fingers in a spell that will put them in a bubble of silence. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. “I spent God fucking knows how long in there and I wanted - I had things to say to you and - I was going to - and then you were  _ gone _ . You fucking killed yourself and there wasn’t even a body to bury. It was like you never existed, Quentin, like you’d been  _ erased  _ from everything but our heads. And you - do you have any idea what it was like, to hear your other selves say you thought we didn’t need you, didn’t want you? I didn’t care that it was a six-year-old and a human robot saying it, I cared that you, the real you, had to believe it if they were saying it.” 

“Eliot -” 

“Why couldn’t you hang on just a little longer, Quentin?” Eliot asks, and he’s not yelling now. His voice is low and raw as he leans forward, hands wrapping tight around Quentin’s hands. “I know it was bad, I hate that I set it in motion, I hate that I wasn’t there, but, Q. I was almost back, why couldn’t you just hold on, another day, another couple hours?” Somewhere deep down Eliot knows this is unfair. But he can’t help it. 

“I wouldn’t - even if I had I wouldn’t have - you would have been hurt, I -” 

“I would have wanted you to!” Eliot cries, and his eyes are burning with tears he refuses to let spill. Just like that night at the bonfire, the tears had been so thick he could barely see but he had still refused to let them fall. “I would have wanted to be there for you, I want to be there for you. But you, you won’t be alone with me, you -” 

“No,” Quentin cuts him off, and he looks scared. “El, no. It, it’s not that. I never want to be anywhere else, I’m not avoiding you. I just. It’s been a lot, making two sets of memories fit together, making being  _ alive  _ again fit. I, I guess you could say I’ve been taking people as things settle about them in my head. Except Margo, she kinda cornered me and there was no option but to hash it out. Which, it’s Margo, that’s about per usual.” 

“But you couldn’t settle about me?” Eliot asks. 

“You matter most,” Quentin says, like that simple sentence isn’t devastating. “Of course it took longer.” He pauses, licking his lips, looking down at where Eliot’s fingers are wrapped around his own. “Eliot, I… He was awful to you. The, the shadeless me. And I get that you don’t want an apology, but I still know he hurt you, I can still regret that, OK? But he, he asked you something. He had the nerve to ask you something. And one reason I wasn’t ready to talk to you before now is because I needed to find the same nerve.” 

Quentin looks up then, and Eliot can’t speak even if he’d wanted to. Because he’s remembering when he’d last seen that look in Quentin’s eyes. The hope there, and something like trust, and what Eliot had refused to admit was love, when Quentin had turned that look on him in the throne room. 

“So, the thing is, though. Everything I - he - shadeless me - said was, was true. Just because he couldn’t feel it, only remember it, didn’t change that. It is true, and I can feel it again now. I love you, more than I know how to say. So… So I’m asking, now that I’m myself. Just like you said I could. Why did you say what you did, that day in the park?”

Over a year ago, Eliot looked into Quentin’s eyes, seeing everything in them that he sees right now, and he fled from it. Fled from something he knew mattered, even as part of him whispered it couldn’t be real. But he knows now that it is. Eliot knows in the worst of ways that Quentin means it when he says he loves him, because that love drove Quentin into the ground until he wasn’t able to summon the energy even to live. Knowing that, there is a part of Eliot that wants to run again, that looks at Quentin and thinks,  _ I should leave you, before I break you. _

But Eliot also knows that doing so would actually just break them both. He thinks of a King of Hearts card with Quentin’s face, burning beside a peach in the bonfire. Thinks of the King of Diamonds card he tucks into an inner pocket of every vest he wears, the one Quentin conjured to look like Eliot himself. A Jack of Hearts is tucked in with it, a card Eliot made to look like Quentin while he waited for him to wake up. Jack of Hearts, because it seemed to fit and Eliot knows what the King of Hearts can mean, he wanted that symbolism far away from his Q. 

Sometime, he’ll show Quentin those cards, instead of just carrying them hidden away near his heart. But not today, he doesn’t think. Today is for something else. 

“I said it because I was trying to tell you that I changed my mind. I was - I was going to tell you. I had all these plans, I was going to tell you that I love you, that I was sorry I rejected you, that I wanted to try - I was going to fix it, win you back if I had to. And then I woke up and you -” Eliot’s voice breaks, and he turns his head away, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“El - no - come here -” Quentin pulls him closer by their entwined hands, then lets go to hug him. Eliot gasps once, then wraps his arms around Quentin just as tightly, hiding his face in that familiar soft hair. He’s crying into it, low raw sobs like after Margo had told him, the tears he’s been refusing to let fall ever since. Distantly, he’s aware that Quentin is crying too where his face is pressed into Eliot’s shoulder. God, what a mess they are.

“You were dead,” Eliot chokes out. “I told you no because I was afraid I’d wreck it and I’d lose you, and then I lost you anyway. I can’t - you can’t do that again, Quentin, I need you, you have to stay, please don’t leave me again.”

“I’m sorry,” Quentin mumbles. “Oh God, El. I didn’t - I didn’t mean to, I didn’t understand, it was all, my head was all… I was just so tired, I couldn’t keep going, I should have never gone there, I’m sorry…”

Eliot shakes his head, pulls Quentin with him as he steps back till he falls into his chair, Quentin curled in his lap. He’s too light, still, he got so thin and came back as he’d been when he died, how did it get this far? It’s a question Eliot will probably never have true answers for, and maybe he shouldn’t look for them. Maybe the important thing is fixing things, now that they can. 

“I know you’re sorry, baby. I am too,” Eliot says, nudging Quentin till he lifts his head and they can press their foreheads together. They’re both still crying, because they’re wrecked, but for once Eliot just doesn’t care. “So we’re going to get through this together, hmm? I’m not going anywhere, so you better not. Understand?” 

“I understand,” Quentin whispers. 

Eliot smiles a little, and they stay curled up like that for a while, Quentin’s head on Eliot’s shoulder and Eliot’s face half-hidden in Quentin’s hair. They’re both still such a fucking mess, there’s hints that magic came back wrong and Eliot is sure they’re going to get stuck dealing with it, something’s wrong in Fillory…

But he can breathe again, with Quentin in his arms. They can recover now, there’s hope again now. And that’s enough, for the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter. (Fair warning if you find me on Twitter, I am very anti-season 5, and I hate to upset people so if that would bother you, Tumblr is better!)

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter!


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